The relationship between language acquisition and human cognitive development

Language and Thinking

Language is the one aspect, which distinguishes human beings from lower species of life (Faccone et al. 2000). Sternberg (1999 as qtd in Faccone et al.) lists its properties as including communication, arbitrary symbolism, regular structure, structure at multiple levels, generation and production and dynamism. Sternberg assumes that language is most likely acquired naturally from the environment where a person is raised as an infant. The stages seem universal. The first is the cooing stage at two to four months. At this initial stage, an infant seems able to produce and possible phonemes or basic speech sounds. An infant's need to distinguish between phonemes of different languages gradually disappears around 8 months. This is when he recognizes the relationship between sound and meaning in his native language. This is how language begins to have importance to him. The findings of Sternberg's study reveal that human beings are born with some kind of internal tool or system that facilitates their ability to learn language as infants. Sternberg's study also suggests that language does not influence thought, as an infant can recognize and utter phonemes different from those of the language of his native environment. The second stage if the babbling stage when the infant begins to connect consonants and vowels. Many of his learned consonants come from the language to which is exposed, often belonging to other languages or he himself constructs. His mouth cavity also begins to develop into that of the adult. The infant starts to control his speech muscles like the tongue, lips and palate. And following the second stage of babbling, the infant learns defined and clear one-word and two-word utterances (Faccone et al.).

It can be gleaned that a person learns language from infancy. He soon learns that language is important. It allows him to communicate with others (Stok 2012). Civilization came to be because of communication. He realizes that he needs language to express or transmit his thought to others. Human beings need and use language in speaking and writing in order to communicate and continue communicating. Thousands of languages have been devised to put one another's messages across. Although thoughts can be conjured without language, thinking requires language for cognitive thoughts. Again, cognition sets a human being apart from the lower forms of life. He is capable of analyzing and interpreting his environment. He does this by using words, sentences and paragraphs to convey his message to others. But thinking by oneself does necessarily require the use of words (Stock). Introspection is necessarily without language (Stok).

How Language Relates to Thought, Emotion and Action

The subject infant and children learn to use language through a series of cognitive development stages (Oster, 2013). If they are not able to use it as a communication tool as they mature, he will not be able to develop critical thinking and other significant interaction capacities. This shortage can lead to emotional and cognitive difficulties and dysfunction. Language spans written words and symbols. Language is used to express needs or emotional responses to any life situation. The inability to use language effectively strongly limits a person's capacity to express his need or intent. It is expressed or transmitted beyond the sounds or words, which proceed from the mouth or mind. In speaking, it is complemented by facial expression, hand gestures, and movement of arms and legs. Persons who have achieved a high level of cognition can communicate their thought with the mere blinking of the eyes or the movement of their fingers. Those who develop the capability to communicate can also express their emotions and the ability to think and respond effectively. Thus, children who suffer delays in their development of cognitive language skills encounter social and educational disadvantages. Causes may be malnutrition, a lack of exposure to adults with strong communication skills or shyness and separation from other children. Kindergarten children who suffer this kind of delay, for example, are behind his peers. Their need to learn necessary critical thinking will be jeopardized (Oster).

Past researches revealed the important function of language in the development of action control (Karbach et al. 2011). A more recent study investigated the role of verbal processes for action-effect learning among four-year-olds. They were guided through an acquisition phase, consisting of key-pressing tasks, followed by a particular sound. They were asked to either label their actions with the corresponding effects, verbalize task-irrelevant words or perform without verbalization. Results showed a link between language and action, which was complex and operating in many levels. Language appears to perform many functions in regulating activity. Action was strongest when it was verbalized along with the corresponding effects. These results implied that task-relevant verbal labeling serves to integrate event representation. This points to the usefulness of language as a tool for directing or redirecting attention to certain features of a given task and to implement and apply tasks representations in planning and guiding the behavior of preschoolers (Karbach et al.).

II. Language and Culture

Researchers have embarked into studies on the influence of language on thought by using and comparing languages to study the comparison (Faccone et al. 2000). Most of them hypothesize that, although specific languages affect a specific part of the brain used, it is not language that produces the linguistic different thought patters among these languages. It is culture (Faccone et al.).

Linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, his student, first emphasized the power of language to reflect culture and influence thinking (Otto 2013). They proposed that the way a person thinks and sees the world is determined by his language. Cultural differences provide evidence that some languages have specific words for specific concepts, while, in other languages, several words are used to represent that specific concept. Language is also used pragmatically, as in the American language, where new skills are often taught and learn by means of verbal instruction. In comparison, new skills are learned through nonverbal instruction in other cultures. Some cultures emphasize or encourage independent learning while others emphasize or encourage cooperative learning (McLeod 1994 as qtd in Otto).

Social roles also influence the use of language in different cultures (Otto 2013). This can be seen at home and in school among the various cultures and sub-cultures. Nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions, and contextual cues, such as shared experiences, are used to communicate their roles in these cultures. In some of them, children who have not learned to speak or express themselves are spoken about, not spoken to (Heath 1983 as qtd in Otto). These children are instructed and expected to respond to adults only when they are addressed. These children may not start a conversation with adults or join adult talks on their own. In other cultures, children who aggressively or enthusiastically offer to answer questions in school are viewed as show-offs. They are not asked to respond to recitational questions but only of clarification or for new information. This is why when these children are asked to answer recitational questions in the classroom, they get confused and hesitate as to the purpose of the inquiry and the response expected or sought from them (Otto).

Culture, Language and Thought Process

Ethnoscience

Anthropologists say that knowing how people of a certain region categorize things in their environment gives a sneak preview of their culture (O'Neill 2006). This type of research is called ethnoscience. Those who practice this science distinguish ways of describing people's categories of reality. Outsiders may bring in their native culture into a place they visit. But they will not be ale to understand the minds of the people of that society. Visitors, on the other hand, can suspend their culture views so as to learn the categories of reality applied by this society. When they do so, they are able to gain much understanding of the indigenous culture. Ethnoscientists differentiate the approaches into etic and emic. Etic categories subscribe to some external system of analysis infused by the visitor. Etic suggests that reality is ultimately objective and more important than cultural perceptions of it. Emic categories are confined to the society members' perception of their own world. Emic speaks little about objective reality. It only provides insights into how people outside the culture perceive that reality through the filters of their language and culture (O'Neill).

III. Vocabulary and Abstract or Complex Thinking

A more traditional role for language in thought and thinking is in order as basis for the development and transfer of abstract knowledge and reasoning and other complex skills (Hampton 2002). Peter Carruthers argues that thought was first developed by pre-linguistic hominids and other mammals as assumed and taught by folk biology, folk physics, or folk psychology. It was also assumed that language evolved for the need to integrate these folk sciences in order to enable human beings to become more adaptive and intelligent (Hampton). A number of observations can be raised about or against Carruthers' argument and assumptions.

The evidence presented by Carruthers does not justify the argument that language should be necessary to integrate the outputs of the folk sciences (Hampton 2002). First, verbal coding and inner speech may make different kinds of information easier to integrate, recall and use. But that does not prove that information cannot be integrated from these folk domains without language in familiar settings. Inner speech may play some role but is not necessary for integration, considering quick reaction times do not allow verbally mediated conscious responses to catch up (Hampton).

Second, language may not be sufficient to insure integration among the domains or fields (Hampton 2002). The outputs of psychology and physics, for example, resist integration in a third or any other known form of language, even for experts. Language is similarly unable to integrate folk biology and folk physics. There has been the enduring common-sense belief in animism in children before their exposure to science education. If language can facilitate domain-general thinking, it must be explained why abstracting from a specific domain should be so much harder (Hampton).

Third, Carruthers does not discuss the crucial role played by language in abstraction

(Hampton 2002). Barsalou (1999 as qtd in Hampton) recently theorized that concepts are mental simulations. He assumed that a particular conceptual content may activate some sensory and motor system associated with perception and related to action related in turn to the concept. If his theory is factual, thinking will operate best within a modality-specific and situated form of mental model. Instead, the key function of language appears to be to provide a way out of this primary level of thought. It bridges the prototype concept created by experience and action in the world and its "clean" representation in capsule form. Language allows the derivation or abstraction of a notion of a concept from individual experiences on which it is drawn. Abstract thinking creates a new mental "entity" for it as the object of thought. This identifying is a human being's very powerful tool, which enables him to create new entities virtually out of nothing (Hampton).

Abstract logical thinking does in a sense take inputs from domain-specific science and integrates them, as Carruthers advances (Hampton 2002). It is, however, not the availability of language itself that is the basis of the integration. Rather, it is with language -- along with the cultural development and transfer of knowledge through it -- that this strenuous activity for abstracting the form is taken from its content. General reasoning skills thus develop and become the means to test and challenge the reasoning of others (Hampton). #